THE QUICKEST MATHEMATICIAN!

THE QUICKEST MATHEMATICIAN

He was an old and wizened man with such great curvature of the backbone that only his staff, which looked like a diagonal of a circle of human form, kept him from falling forwards! His sallow face with hollowed cheeks was less noticeable than the luxuriant growth of all-white beard from his chin down to his caved in abdomen like the nest of Sociable Weavers! His presence was thus death-like and there was a sick feeling and odour when he laboured for his breaths while a cold sweat broke from the creased forehead of his haggard countenance. He held a dead chicken in his arms close to his chest!

            The driver of the car that had only moments ago killed that fowl trembled at the sight of that deadly man behind whom a crowd gathered instantaneously and which multiplied in strength every passing second. The fear in his heart increased proportionally. The old man was no longer an infirm adversary! The driver had hallucination of a cannibalistic monster!

            Md. Ali only spoke softly like a very old man would do and he asked the driver to hold the dear dead bird because it seemed too heavy for his arms and heart to carry it any longer! He spent the next three seconds in calculations and nobody could even understand the problem when his answer came!

            One and half kilogram of meat and a dozen eggs per year till ten years and he named a final price: 1100 bucks!

            The quickest mathematician thus triumphed and the smile which was hidden behind his beard was as big as the bundle of notes he hid within his lungi!